Yesterday, I listened to the Josh Marshall podcast, which was recorded on Wednesday while the news broke that Pelosi wasn’t going to have allow Gym Jordan and Gym Jr. on the 1/6 committee. Kate Riga, who covers Capital Hill for TPM, was remarkably shocked that a Democrat actually exercised power. The reason wasn’t anything ideological on her part — she simply had spent time reporting on Democrats and expected Pelosi to hold her nose and accept Jordan because Democrats generally go along to get along. You really have to listen to the podcast to hear her expressions of shock over the news.
Anyway, that got me thinking about the perceived versus real downsides of exercises of political power. Let’s consider Liz Cheney for a moment. On Wednesday, the DC press was basically writing her out of the Republican Party due to her 1/6 committee appointment. The prediction was that Kevin McCarthy will strip her of her committee assignments and basically make her an unperson, especially after she stood on the Capitol steps and said, essentially, that McCarthy wasn’t fit to be Speaker. As soon as yesterday, both McCarthy and Scalise are dodging questions about Cheney and trying to move focus away from 1/6. Here’s a woman who will exercise the power she has to the very limits of its existence.
Similarly, Mitch McConnell’s statement that no Republican will vote to increase the debt ceiling was taken very seriously by the DC press. Though he might be able to exercise that power, when has this debt ceiling bullshit ever worked for Republicans? I think it’s generally a loser, and it also might thwart McConnell’s desire to keep the filibuster, since it’s another example of how the Senate minority can basically destroy the country with almost no effort.
I don’t have a larger point here other than I think normies hearing that Pelosi exercised her power wouldn’t be shocked or surprised, and there won’t be any real consequences for it, and that a lot of the DC media power analysis gets it wrong.
Baud
It doesn’t help our image with a social media obsessed Village when we constantly describe Dems as weak and feckless on the intertubes. IMHO.
Parfigliano
Not only a DEM exercising power a woman doing it.
Capri
It’s recently struck me how stuck everyone is in their concepts of the essential nature of Dem and GOP. To many of the folks I meet – they still believe GOP = fiscally conservative and DEM = tax and spend. The last 40 years has been the opposite, but somehow that hasn’t penetrated. A democrat standing up to republicans is a man bites dog story – and I’m afraid this will be just as true 40 years from now as it is today.
hrprogressive
Maybe if Democrats weren’t so used to, writ large, capitulating to the Fascists on, basically everything, while chasing that Bipartisan Unicorn High™, the DC press and others wouldn’t be so damn shocked at an exercise of power by them.
DC exists for wankery, and, if Democrats stopped giving them material to wank over, maybe the Press would stop it. Probably not likely at this point, but Dems have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
So does America, frankly.
hueyplong
You could argue that normies won’t pay any attention to anything until it’s actual hearings and whatever they disclose, so the only thing important about this week on the normie front is that the obstructionists won’t be on TV except as talking heads telling them that what they just saw was a nothingburger (probably in those words).
The RWNJs get their positions on a drip from FoxNews so nothing that happened this week matters for them. They’ll be entubated by the time the testimony comes out anyway.
So it was a good week, thanks in large part to Pelosi, with an assist from Darth Cheney’s daughter.
Uninvited Guest
@hrprogressive: Case in point. This is the problem. Whatever Dems actually do this is how they’re characterized, which keeps voters from actually listening to them and helping them do what they want to get done.
kindness
I no longer think about filibuster changes. Manchin & Sinema have made it clear they won’t vote for it even if their political life depended upon it (which really it does). Both seem determined to go down with their ships and I say more power to going down with those ships. A better Democrat will take Sinema’s place and a Republican will take Manchin’s. Such is life.
Democrats only have reconciliation as a tool for the real work they need to do and that limits what they can do. Sucks but…….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Remember when Pelosi postponed trump’s SOTU during the shut down, and the Beltway rang for their smelling salts, while The Beast itself recognized it as a boss move.
As with Obama saving the auto industry and killing OBL, it’s remarkable what Democrats can accomplish when they’re not saddled with the likes of Lieberman and Manchin. That whole “Constitution” thing can be so problematic. And yet, the rosy-fingered horseshoe left can never get that. Of course, then they’d lose their justification for righteously pouting on the sidelines.
Ohio Mom
I think there’s so much kabuki in Congress —especially in the Senate — that some people forget that not everything our elected reps do is play-acting for effect and sleight of hand.
And when your job is to blather constantly about your interpretations of every minor movement, no surprise you could be thrown for a loop by something serious and straightforward.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Hmm, Madame Speaker understands that having frat boys/man-toddlers trying to ruin the proceedings is a bad idea and nixes it, and she’s not called “Shrill”? Did I miss something here?
Omnes Omnibus
Well, that’s more than my RDA of horseshit covered nice and early in the morning.
Feckless
Yay power 6 months too late.
Nancy needed to retire 10 years ago.
brendancalling
I have noticed that during the 2020 campaign, the DC press was almost always wrong about everything, beginning with Biden’s chances.
Since elected, CNN, the WaPo (which I read regularly), the NYT, NPR, and pretty much every other press outlet has predicted failure and disaster for Biden, only to be wrong again and again and again.
I hate saying this, but the only person who seems to consistently get it right is Jennifer Rubin. It’s kind of remarkable, given her history.
Omnes Omnibus
@Feckless: It is nice when people live up their ‘nyms.
Professor Bigfoot
@Omnes Omnibus: beat me to it.
Another Scott
It’s summertime in DC. Only a tiny fraction of the population cares about this inside-baseball stuff.
But if the political reporters are shaken enough to examine their priors and biases and understand the dangers of continuing to feed and nurture 40-45+ year old narratives, that’s a good thing.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“Blinded by their own made up narrative” is what DougJ been arguing for a while now about the press.
lowtechcyclist
Just a refresher: remember in 2009 when the Dems spent the whole damn year bipartisaning over Obamacare, and not getting a single GOP vote but instead wasting a shitload of time where they had control?
And remember early 2010, after Scott Brown won Teddy’s Senate seat and a lot of Dems were ready to give up on Obamacare, and we made all those PTDB calls to our Congresscritters to get them to take advantage of the fact that the damn bill had already gotten its 60 Senate votes?
And how 41 Senate Republicans all but immobilized the Dems for the rest of 2010?
The Dems have a track record. If you’re paying attention, the party seems to have had a backbone transplant over the winter, and it’s great, so Pelosi not accepting Gym Jordan and that Banks guy didn’t surprise me.
But it would have surprised me anytime before this year. Dems are still too in thrall to procedure for their own good, but at least they aren’t letting it totally tie their hands the way they often have in the past.
raven
Cleveland’s baseball team has officially changed its name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians amid a wide push for sports organizations to stop using racist team names.
The Cleveland team’s owner, Paul Dolan, announced the team’s commitment to change its name in December.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Everyone has a track record that can be portrayed in a negative light.
In the end, they passed Obamacare despite uniform GOP opposition to it, and since then, they have held strong in keeping the GOP from undermining it.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: I remember them chasing down conserva-Dems votes to get to 60, but I am old and perhaps my mind wanders.
Baud
@raven:
I wasn’t sure if “Indians” was considered racist. Certainly not like the name of the Washington Football Team (which I think at this point should go permanently nameless).
sdhays
It’s astounding to me that anyone considers the fact that Speaker Pelosi denied Gym Jordan, in particular, from being on the 1/6 Committee. When I read about the resolution forming the committee and saw that the Speaker had the power to overrule the Minority Leader’s picks, I read that as almost literally talking about Gymmy. If Pelosi wasn’t going to use this power on Gym Jordan, a man who’s few talents seem to include ignoring crimes and creating disruption, then why did she put it in the resolution in the first place?
If you were surprised by this and you cover Washington, you need a break because you’ve lost the forest for the trees.
rp
@Baud: 100%. The Democrats have retaken the Presidency, Senate, and House in the last few years in spite of a ton of obstacles. And they impeached Trump twice for f**k’s sake. They’re far from perfect, but they’re not idiots or feckless, and it annoys the hell out of me when people on our side bitch and moan about them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Yes, and, like now, only the obsessives will remember the sausage making and not the resulting sausage. A senator or two being a prima donna is nothing new.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lowtechcyclist:
Remember when it took six months to sit Al Franken to get that “control”? Remember how excited we were when ex-Republican Jim Webb sort of fluked his way into another seat Dems needed to get “control”? Remember how flipping the cancer-stricken Arlen Specter was necessary to get that “control”? Remember Joe Lieberman and Max Baucus, without whom they did not have “control”? Remember Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad? Robert Byrd? Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor? Mary Landrieu and Bill Nelson?
The structure of the legislative branch favor conservatives. That’s the reality. It’s not about “spine” or “balls” or “tuffness”. It’s the reality of the country and the Constitution.
I remember in 2009 when the left wanted to retreat to the sidelines in a righteous sulk because Obama had not gotten them that new bicycle. And I remember that it took the right about fifty years to get where they are now.
ETA: and not just the left. I remember Jon Stewart, the hipster David Broder, getting a lot of fawning coverage from people who probably thought, and think, of themselves as “progressive” for the Rally About Nothing. where he raked Obama for doing nothing, then called for Dems to be more bipartisan. I remember that godawful Lincoln Tunnel speech.
mrmoshpotato
@raven: Oh Cleveland…
Passed up the perfectly good opportunity to rename the team for the old-timey, steam-driven passenger vessel for which the city is known.
Le sigh.
sdhays
@lowtechcyclist: As I recall, none other than Barack Obama himself credited Nancy Pelosi with landing the Obamacare plane after the disastrous Massachusetts special election. “Steel in her spine” (possibly paraphrasing) was the general description I recall.
And Nancy was the only major leader to really have Dump’s number from the beginning. She was the only one he ever feared.
Lynn Dee
Kate Riga is perhaps too young to have followed Nancy Pelosi long enough to know she is never weak and feckless.
RSA
I think you know the cure.
hueyplong
@mrmoshpotato: Being a sportsball history geek, I was thinking Cleveland Spiders.
Gin & Tonic
Boy, this thread is really bringing out the brogressives. Have a nice day in here, folks.
RepubAnon
@Baud: The Village Media People need to look at the world outside of the DC cocktail weenier circuit.
Mike in NC
Former senator Bob Dole got in the news for some reason this week. He’s 98 years old, which just goes to show that the good really do die young. I’ve hated that guy for as long as I can remember. He was an early Trump supporter and he cried like a baby at Nixon’s funeral. Die, Bob, die.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I wondered that about the “Indians” name too. The Washington Football Team’s former name was unambiguously racist. “Indians” seems less offensive to me, but what do I know?
Do you think the teams currently called “Chiefs,” “Braves,” etc., will follow suit? I’d say the odds are that they will, eventually. There are many teams in the South currently called “Rebels,” and I expect that will change too in the fullness of time.
My teams are the Gators (NCAA), Buccaneers (NFL) and the Rays (MLB), so I probably don’t have to worry about my merch becoming obsolete.
raven
@Baud: Well if it is to one person I guess that does it. FSU gets to keep Osceola but the Illini I had to dump the Chief because there is no existing tribe to support him like the Seminoles did.
Betty Cracker
@Mike in NC: I saw a news item about Dole this week too and was shocked to learn he’s still alive.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I suspect if Cleveland had given up that godawful mascot a long time ago, people would be less likely to see the team name as racist. But I can’t speak for native people.
raven
@Betty Cracker:
Opening Day protest about Cleveland Indians name continues despite no fans at game
randy khan
I was very amused by McConnell’s debt ceiling statement, partly because threats on the debt ceiling are so obviously political that nobody should be fooled by them, and partly because if he wanted to guarantee there would be another reconciliation bill there was no better way to do it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, yes. I will never forgive Stewart. Also, good description of him.
Kent
And only a tiny fraction of that fraction are persuadable non-partisan voters. So they are basically convincing no one of anything.
I frankly don’t know ANYONE who follows politics closely enough to have an opinion on something like the composition of the 1/6 committee who isn’t already a committed partisan on one side or the other. The only people who aren’t (or who claim not to be) are wanker reporters who think everyone is like them. Mostly because they only hang out with people like them.
Baud
@raven:
Is that true? Was it only one person?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: True. The mascot is worse than the name.
syphonblue
@Betty Cracker: Well, for one thing, they’re Native Americans, not Indians….
For a second, remember this was their logo:
https://imgur.com/RLLXQkn
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@sdhays:
Josh Marshall made this same point to Kate Riga in the podcast. She wasn’t around then.
She’s an excellent reporter and certainly doesn’t turn out stale, predictable DC media copy. Her reaction was genuine and based on her lived experience covering Democrats on the Hill. I brought it up just to point out that even she was shocked by a bald, no fucks left to give, exercise of power by Pelosi.
H.E.Wolf
It is surprising how much free time those bros seem to have available. I suspect it’s because they aren’t doing much of the actual work (boring, unglamorous, low-profile tasks) to improve the political landscape.
It’s a pity, because they might find that they actually enjoy those tasks (and their effectiveness) if they volunteered their time to do them. And certainly they’d be most welcome as partners in the work!
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
It is a government. In this country it is supposed to attempt to work to a consensus, that’s the way it is supposed to work. The reflubs have decided (yes, quite a while back as many have noted) that they can steal more, fuck over more people they “dislike” when they don’t do anything positive for their actual constituents but massively positive for their owners and bank accounts. It will, as it always has, either end in losing for them or in them hijacking the political agenda. My point is that democrats have mostly tried to work with them, because this is not a government supposedly made up of special privilege but the betterment of all. The rich and wantabe rich, and not all of them, have highjacked the government many times for their own benefit and people like Joe and Nancy have seen this many times, but it takes a unified front to bring this out in the open and the reality is that we haven’t really had that until now, with very few exceptions. And we are barely unified now. But SFB’s massively shitty non-handling of Covid (and everything else!) has made this rather clear and this very recent about face by the reflubs about Covid and vaccines has shown what their messaging and bullshit really is obviously about – stealing everything not tied down, and that they are losing badly. Biden’s steadfast actual governance and tone, Pelosi’s legislative abilities show that they understand and while they will continue to work within the proper political structure, they are not playing the old game, but the new game of giving no for an answer.
We are at a crossroads in our political future and Biden and Pelosi both know this, understand this, and are working on it. It will never be easy, given the two sides of politics in this country, realism or theft.
You should be able to easily imagine which side I think they are on…..
Kent
It’s not so much the actual name as it is the mascot and imagery.
https://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-curse-of-chief-wahoo/Content?oid=2954423
Betty Cracker
@syphonblue: I’m no expert on this topic, but from what I’ve read, not all Native Americans want to be called “Native Americans,” and some prefer “Indians” even though the name is based on a navigational error. As I understand it, the consensus is that using the proper tribal name is preferable whenever possible.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Betty Cracker
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Riga is a fine reporter, IMO. Marshall was smart to make her a co-host.
hueyplong
@Kent: The only time in the last 100 years that they won the WS, they had maybe the most offensive mascot depiction of all.
https://www.comc.com/Cards/Baseball/1996/Upper_Deck_Cleveland_Indians_1948_World_Series_Logo_-_Base/1948/Cleveland_Indians_Logo/2126883
[hope link works] The depicted image was on the left sleeve of their uniforms (minus the champions flag, added for the tshirt depicted).
And this was in a season in which the only two Black players in the AL (Satchel Paige and Larry Doby) played for them.
Benno
@Mike in NC: I always liked referring to Dole as the last bad republican because all the current batch are immeasurably worse.
raven
@Baud: No, I was just saying that may be all it takes.
zhena gogolia
@raven: Good for them.
Kent
So how did they come up with this new name? I don’t live within 2500 miles of Cleveland so I haven’t followed this. Was the public involved or was it just a corporate decision?
I’m thinking now of the new Seattle NHL franchise here in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently the suits wanted a more conventional name like “Sea Lions”, but there was a huge upswelling of public support for the name “Seattle Kraken” and they went along with public sentiment. Which was a very wise decision considering how fast Kraken merchandise is flying off the shelves around here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Benno: I was surprised and sad to see him wearing a trump hat and declaring himself a trumper. I remember him being booed at his own convention when he referred to Bill Clinton as (from memory) “my opponent– because he is not my enemy”
zhena gogolia
@rp:
Me too!
raven
@Kent:
The organization spent most of the past year whittling down a list of potential names that was at nearly 1,200 just over a month ago. But the process quickly accelerated, and the club landed on Guardians.
Team owner Paul Dolan said last summer’s social unrest, touched off by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, spurred his intention to change the club’s name.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rp: @zhena gogolia: I also too wish to sign this petition
sab
@Baud: Don’t you remember Chief Wahoo?
Ohio Mom
Apparently Dole has terminal cancer and is reviewing his life, and finding everything in good order. So don’t expect any deathbed epiphanies.
I see that Biden visited Dole soon after he announced his illness. You can file that under, Some acts of kindness are indeed wasted. I don’t hold this against Biden, he can’t help himself.
Ruckus
@rp:
Yes, this.
Isn’t the saying something like “Perfect is the enemy of better.”
Baud
@sab:
I hear their keeping the mascot and just calling him a Guardian now.
different-church-lady
@Baud: The Villager-Twitter feedback loop is something fierce. The Villagers look at Twitter to see what the conventional wisdom is, repeat it into news (and back into Twitter, since there’s no longer any difference between Twitter and news), which hardens the conventional wisdom, and the end result is just a bunch of people repeating the same goddamned stuff over and over and over again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Charlie Pierce has a thought on that.
Scariest fuckin’ animal in North America, if you want my opinion.
different-church-lady
@rp:
The bitching and moaning is always as big as its tank.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
And here I was thinking you were going to suggest that he/she get fecked.
Benno
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: me too! Some (many) years ago I held him up as an exemplar of exactly that sentiment: my opponent, not my enemy. The trumper turn really soured me and turned me into a political creature I hardly like being. As tfg likes to say, “sad.”
sab
@Baud: They got rid of the mascot several years ago.
WaterGirl
@Baud: 100% agree!
Baud
@sab:
I was kidding.
sdhays
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I’ve read her reporting as well and I agree she’s a good reporter, so I’m not trying to pick on her, but…still. Pelosi has been telegraphing this for weeks; you don’t put in the ability to overrule the Minority Leader’s choices just to fill up pages, particularly when the Minority Leader and his party have been working to sabotage the idea of the committee from day 1. I think Pelosi hoped that McQarthy would see it as a threat and back off a bit and name non-meth smokers, but McQarthy decided he’d rather not participate at all, so she obliged.
The collective Washington shock is just so difficult for me to understand.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Early”?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I wonder how much Disney world charge for the rights.
SFAW
@sdhays:
I take it you haven’t “met” commenter Villago Delenda Est?
ETA: Re: your general comment: I think Speaker Pelosi gamed it out, 11-dimensional-chess-wise. Had she NOT done so, I would have been surprised.
Baud
@sdhays:
My guess is the Village assumed that rule was to keep people like MTG or Boebart or Goser off the committee. Not fine upstanding men like Jordan.
sdhays
@SFAW: I didn’t say I was surprised. I just still don’t understand it.
SFAW
@sdhays:
Yeah, I got that. I wasn’t really disagreeing with you, sorry if I expressed it poorly. [I used to be able to construct coherent sentences. Oh well.]
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: I am not really a morning person.
sdhays
@Baud: You may be right, which is astounding in its own way since Gym was the MTG before being MTG was “cool”.
patrick Il
@raven:
I hope they don’t change the names of the Celtics or Fighting Irish.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Were it the day after the Bucks win, I could understand that. [Due to the late hour, not the imbibing, which I know you don’t any more.]
Congrats, by the way.
WaterGirl
@rp:
It’s quite possible that some of the people – on our side – who bitch and moan about them are not actually on our side.
Uncle Cosmo
@Feckless: Feck off and dye, imbecile!
JMG
There are these weird Art Deco statues in Cleveland that are known as the Guardians of Traffic, hence the new name.
citizen dave
@patrick Il: Had a work friend with Irish roots who hated everything Notre Dame and argued how racist Fighting Irish is.
Meanwhile the AAA Indianapolis Indians (I’m 2 blocks away from their field as I type) quietly go about their business as they have since 1902, the second oldest minor league club. When I first came to Indy at the old park there was a teepee beyond the fence. Now the mascot is a goofy red bear, which brilliantly anticipated the repopulation of Indiana by bears. They are coming down from Michigan and recently one crossed from Kentucky to SW Indiana.
Tom Levenson
Haven’t read the comment thread yet, but just driving by to say that Mistermix seems to me to be exactly right, and that the DC press is a self selected elite that has fallen into the meritocracy hole of assuming that their presence w/in the charmed circle means that they are as expert as they thought those jobs required when they were trying to break in.
That is: they validate themselves by their position, not their work. And the result is that crap groupthink gets seen as brilliant, and challenges to it from those outside the inner sanctum are born of ignorance and emotional blinders. Of necessity, for if that crits were valid they’d be made by people inside, amirite?
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Baud: It’s a little more ambiguous. The Smithsonian museum dedicated to NA history and culture is called the American Indian museum and I’m guessing if Indian had racist connotations they wouldn’t have used it.
Uncle Cosmo
@mrmoshpotato: In fact it makes perfect sense to minimize added cost: Simply replace IN with GUAR wherever it appears, et voila, the new name!
Same thing happened in Baltimore some years back when the massive multistory Montgomery Ward building off Washington Blvd was converted to shops and offices: They renamed the place MONTGOMERY PARK and only had to replace two letters in the large neon sign atop the edifice to keep it relevant and accurate. Clever!
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@sdhays:
Well, part of it is that they hear a hell of a lot of sabre rattling and empty threats in their day-to-day.
Basically, I think she gave an honest reaction to an event she wasn’t expecting. At least part of that has to be because she’s used to Democrats threatening to use their power and then not using it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: absolutely true, but a lot of them get into primaries and elections calling themselves Democrats, at least when convenient, and a lot of Democrats, who should know better, encourage them, unfortunately.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Mornings have always sucked. And thanks, 50 years is a long time to wait and this is a pretty good group of players as humans.
citizen dave
@JMG: I like they found something with the “ians” at the end. Could have gone with “Ohioans”.
Also a baseball history fan, so Spiders would have been cool.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: That said, grinning Chief Wahoo was definitely racist.
germy
Nice logo
sdhays
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I give a lot of credit to Josh Marshall who is marinating in the same soup the others are but seems to be better than most at keeping perspective on it.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Oh, Baud, watch this clip of Biden coming back at a reporter. It is a thing of beauty!
Gravenstone
@Betty Cracker: I think an argument against retaining “Indians” is that it’s not a name that originated with the native peoples. Rather it was applied to them because of Columbus’ inability to navigate and his errant belief that he’s found a country halfway around the world from where he actually ended up.
emmyelle
SFAW
@Tom Levenson:
Not dissimilar from the “If he/she is rich, he/she must be better/more worthy than the hoi polloi” BS.
germy
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah, that was nice. That reporter done got caught.
VOR
@Frankensteinbeck: I was more than a little annoyed with Stewart when he appeared to endorse the “Lab leak” scenario for COVID-19 in his recent appearance on the Colbert Late Show.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I like to say Chris Christie damn near died of his own stupidity and loyalty to trump, if that’s not redundant, and his life was saved, one could argue, by trumpian corruption, and ABC still pays him to bloviate about politics.
Hildebrand
The beltway press, and far too many ‘experts’ on the interwebs/blogosphere, consider themselves so much smarter, so much savvier, so much more clear-minded and brave than the hacks and knaves who are our elected Democratic officials – just ask them.
Of course, the moment you suggest that they take their brilliance and get themselves elected they splutter and swat away such a suggestion as far too bourgeoise and small-minded.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck: Go watch that video of Stewart on the Colbert show, they tried passing it off as Stewart’s anti-vaccing was a joke but Stewart’s eyes said otherwise. I think Samatha Bee was on to Stewart for a while now.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, ABC had Christie on after the Trump/Biden debate to talk about the debate. I don’t remember if they disclosed the fact that Christie had helped Trump with debate prep.
I know George Will was compelled to admit his wife was working on Romney’s presidential campaign while he was being paid to “analyze” Obama’s campaign. Will looked grumpy as hell about it, too.
MaximusNYC
I believe the new team name comes from the Guardians of Transportation, a group of iconic Art Deco statues on a bridge in Cleveland. Images here.
Kent
The word “Indian” is used and accepted by most Native American tribes. Who, I should note, don’t actually have a comparable word in most native languages. You are either Navajo or Cheyenne or Apache or Inupiat, etc. etc
The Cleveland baseball team was racist more because of it’s mascot and imagery and history.
patrick Il
@citizen dave:
I grew up not far from ND. Going to some of their games is a fond memory. The name is fine with me, even the leprechaun.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Huh, that’s interesting, are you referring to something specific? I know Wyatt Cenac hasn’t been shy about his opinion.
Politics and Stewart aside, I always find it interesting how many actors/comics just got better and better when they left TDS: Samantha Bee, Colbert, Steve Carrell, Dan Bakkedhal– exception that proves the rule: the inexplicable career of Ed Helms.
Also curious to me: The almost complete disappearance of the Kilborn era cast. A Whitney Brown was particularly funny, I thought.
Kathleen
@rp: Yup. I agree
Also when I think about how they were threatened and harrassed during ACA town hall meetings yet unlike Rethugs they kept holding meetings despite the death threats and some freshmen who knew their vote would cost them reelection voted for it anyway, mine being one of them. I’m going to stop before I say something I regret.
Kent
Hey…Portland also has a giant MONTGOMERY PARK building, named that way for the same reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Park_(Portland,_Oregon)
VeniceRiley
@citizen dave: Maybe they can rename them Indyans.
sdhays
@zhena gogolia: “I’m…I’m not sure…”
LOL!
Uncle Cosmo
@Baud: FWIW, I bought a T-shirt at the Denver airport some years ago – don’t have it handy, but IIRC it was headed
above a photo of four Native American warriors with rifles, with the caption below reading
(I think this is it.)
Sounded about right to me – though I’ve never had the hootspaw to wear it through airport security screening…
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
LOL! I feel like I’ve been “Maximum Daily Requirement” of horseshit for *years* now! Granted, part of that allowance is *literal* horseshit, ’tis true.
.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty Cracker: One of the historians I watch on you tube was pointing out that “Indian” or “American Indian” is much better at referring to the aboriginal population of the Americas because “native American” is also used for anyone born in the Americas.
SFAW
@patrick Il:
Apropos of nothing in particular:
For the longest time, I’ve been (mis)reading your nym/nom as “patrick II,” as in “patrick” followed by two upper-case “i”s. But I see now I’ve been misreading it. So what’s the deal/story with the second part of your nym/nom?
StringOnAStick
We went to the free concert/foodfest last night; the main act was Joseph, a 3 woman band from Portland and obviously local favorites. Pro woman music, tight harmonies and just plain fun; a crowd of every age and everyone having a happy time. Through the middle of the crowd walked two open carry assholes, displaying their hand penises on their hips and halfway through I think it hit them just how stupid and silly they looked. No one confronted or even paid them any attention, so their plan to go show those libs in Bend just looked pathetic. That they did it when three women were on stage wowing the crowd was truly the chef’s kiss.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yup. I should have added to my screed above that after all we’ve outlined here Bernie Sanders came behind and said he was going to primary Obama over it.
Gravenstone
@sdhays: Did he troll for pick up partners at CrossFit, too?
SFAW
@zhena gogolia:
I bet the Biden sometimes wants to call up Obama and ask “Hey, can I borrow Luther for a couple of days?”
Kathleen
@brendancalling: I’ve thought that many times.
Miss Bianca
@Ruckus: As usual, my friend, your analysis is spot-on sound.
Kathleen
@Frankensteinbeck: Me neither. I’m Irish with Scorpio rising. Stewart is on a very long list of people I loathe and many of them “are on our side”.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Anytime Bee and Steward are together post TDS she just tears into Stewart as part of her monolog. If I remember correctly she called him something like a “Jewish Ground Hog from upstate who shows up once a year to bless us beginited fools with his wisdom…” and Steward sure as heck came across as some grandpa crazy pants at Thanksgiving dinner setting all us kids straight on our Rippty Rap when he was on Colbert’s show.
Kathleen
@hueyplong: I read a great article about Doby and wish I could link to it. I think it was on MLB.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: Oh, wow, I have not seen that clip and it is a thing of beauty! Particularly the flummoxed, “I…I’m not sure”
ETA: Although the sight of Joe just stalking away after delivering his zinger was also sublime.
sdhays
@Gravenstone: He trolls all day. And he didn’t care about sexual abuse at Ohio State. So….probably?
hueyplong
@Kathleen: Obscured by Jackie Robinson, but had a great career as a trail blazer in the AL.
Came up as an infielder and converted to OF in 1948 after spending spring training getting lessons from old school HoFer Tris Speaker.
Eljai
@StringOnAStick: I just recently found out about Joseph. Saw them perform on an episode of “The Kate” on PBS and became an instant fan. I’m just gobsmacked about the open-carry assholes. I can’t even with the utter stupidity. But I’m so impressed with the audience just ignoring them and not letting them ruin the vibe. Glad you had a great time!
rp
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Stewart has turned into a massive douche over the last 10-12 years (basically, post-Bush), but I think you’ve got the causality backwards. Stewart’s greatest strength IMO was his ability to spot and nurture talented people. I don’t think it’s an accident that a ton of successful actors and comedians have emerged from the Daily Show.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: They tried that gambit in Cincinnati also
They’re trying to bait Joe to disavow a position taken by the so called “left” to spark an internecine battle. Joe knows how corrupt and lazy they are and refuses to play their games. Another reason. why they hate him.
hueyplong
@rp: I like to pretend that Stewart died a decade or so ago so I can remember him for his beatdown of Tucker Carlson.
rp
@rp: What’s really depressing about Stewart (and incredibly ironic), is that he turned into exactly what he used to lampoon. In its 00’s heyday, the Daily Show was far more focused on the media than it was on the GOP. The whole show was pretty much about how much the media sucked during the Bush admin. and how damaging the both sides do it, DC insider mentality was for the country. But Stewart gazed into the abyss and it gazed back. So after he became really famous and, not coincidentally, Obama was elected, Stewart turned into the lazy, head up his ass pundit that he’d spent so many years attacking.
Kathleen
@hueyplong: If I were not on phone I’d find and post the link. It was a great article
Ksmiami
@Baud: eh. I think Original Americans works. Most Indigenous Americans don’t consider themselves Indians because they aren’t from India and this was a mistaken term made as the US was colonized…
Ksmiami
@germy: good. Glad she’s gone. Sorry not sorry
Citizen Alan
@Feckless: Nina Turner? Is that you?
artem1s
@Kent:
The Traffic Guardians are a well known icon for Cleveland. The ball park built in the 90’s sits at the end of a bridge that links the east and west sides of the city – Hope Memorial Bridge
I was completely surprised at the choice as I expected them to go with The Spiders. But I really love the choice. It’s a complete break with past names, yet is evocative of the city’s rust belt roots. The bridge was renamed a few years ago to honor the father of one of Cleveland’s native sons who was a stonemason on the project. It was a depression era project that cost the city millions. There is a lot of history connected to that bridge.
I’m not wild about the font choice for the new name, but it does stylistically carry forward the established look. They have played with fonts several times during the team’s 110 year history and I expect there to be several variations rolled out in the next year. The best part about the choice is the art deco imagery of the bridge statues has amazing possibilities for uniform designs.
Kent
@rp: At least Stewart had the good sense to retire when he reached his “pull date” unlike so many others in the same business.
His decline also seems to be directly correlated with the birth of his children. His daughter is the same age as mine. I wonder if there is any correlation. If having kids as a wealthy New Yorker sucked him into a different social set of rich New York NIMBY helicopter parent types worried about the “best” schools and such shit.
Citizen Alan
@syphonblue:
I’ve often thought that the most disturbing thing about that logo wasn’t that it was a racist caricature of a Native American, but rather that it honestly looked like a racist caricature of a Latino pretending to be a Native American.
misterpuff
@Betty Cracker:
Very True, but the original name of the MLB team was The Devil Rays, which if remember correctly set off the Fundies for Satanism, which we know all aquatic creatures practice (when not palling around with Aquaman). It was a nice clip to The Rays (of Sunshine). Much like when the NHL Minnesota NorthStars moved to Dallas and became the Stars (should have been The Lone Stars).
Citizen Alan
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
One of the few legitimate complaints about “political correctness” is that it impossible for organizations with a long life-span to anticipate what might become offensive 100 years in the future. Nearly everyone, I think, would agree that “colored people” is offensive except for actual racists and, ironically, the NAACP, which still has the term in its name. Hell, there was a Bloom County strip from the 1980s that riffed off the fact that “colored people” was offensive, whereas “people of color” was fine, if not preferred.
jnfr
@JMG:
Those statues are actually pretty cool. I didn’t know they existed until I saw pics on Twitter this morning.
SN in CO
I don’t think that many of us remember the last normative assumptions that were pre-Reagan. I was only 11 when he was elected, but I do vaguely remember that there was old conventional wisdom something along the lines of “Democrats are always disorganized, but somehow they always win.” I fell like this was a weak echo (maybe a ghost?) of old New Deal conventional wisdom. Certainly, between 1932 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Democrats tended to be the dominant party in U.S. politics.
The problem is that few of us still remember that pre-1964 dominance – nor would we want to return to it, given the dominance of Jim Crow in those days. I feel as if we are at another (new) inflection point in U.S. politics. The Reagan-era conventional wisdom is breaking down, but I don’t know what will replace it – and in the meantime, we still are wired for that particular crumbling political paradigm. But what is next? Do we know?
M31
my theory is they went with Guardians because they can reuse one side of the current uniforms, only replacing In– with Guar– on the other side, the cheapskates
so now we can suggest new names for the Washington team, I’m rooting for Bumpkins
patrick Il
@SFAW:
You are reading it right. When I started commenting here some years ago ( my first internet comments ever) I tried to use “patrick” but could not because there was already someone else using that name. I was in a hurry to comment and just added “II”. I built a history (for good and for bad) so I just kept it. Not much of a story.
sab
@Baud: I figured you were. Just wanted to defend the team.
JoyceH
@randy khan:
I was frankly shocked by McConnell’s comment and it reinforced something I’ve been thinking lately, which is that somewhere on the road to culthood, the GOP has just forgotten how to do politics.
There are two infrastructure bills in the works. The bipartisan bill includes all the stuff that everybody wants, the things you can point to and tell your constituents ‘I got that for you.’ But the Republicans have started dragging their feet about it now, and might not go along with it. Well, if they don’t, the Dems can just slap that bill into the reconciliation bill, which they can pass with zero GOP support – the 2022 anti–GOP ads write themselves at that point.
But the reconciliation bill, with or without the bipartisan bill included, is a mighty hefty and expensive bill. So much so that it makes some more conservative Democrats a bit queasy, and has the pundits asking ‘Can Shumer keep his caucus united?!’
But THEN here comes McConnell, claiming the GOP can’t back the debt ceiling raise, and that the Dems will have to ‘put it in the reconciliation bill’ – thereby ENSURING that the Dem caucus will stay united because there’s not a Democrat alive who would vote to default on the debt and crash the economy.
Giving the Dems the talking point ‘Look at ALL this stuff we got for you, without a smidgeon of support from the GOP, who want to default, tank the economy and plunge us into a depression.’
What’s the UPSIDE of the Republican strategy?
Another instance – McCarthy has a hissy and pulls ALL his nominees for the 1/6 committee. Well, not all those hearings are going to be open, some will be closed hearings dealing with classified information, and McCarthy will no longer have eyes and ears inside the workings of the committee. (Yeah, I know that committee members aren’t supposed to pass on classified information to their party leader, just like he’s not supposed to scamper up to Bedminster to report to his boss, but you know that they do and he does.)
Again – what’s the UPSIDE there?
They just don’t know how to do politics anymore.
Kent
@JoyceH: The GOP hasn’t known how to do politics for decades in the sense of getting actual legislation passed. They are great at ramming through judges and tax cuts. But that is about it.
They are also great at blocking shit when they are in the actual majority. That is easy peasy. Not so easy when you are in the minority.
What was the last successful big GOP legislative package that wasn’t tax cuts? You probably have to go all the way back to Eisenhower and the interstate highway system to find it.
Kent
@jnfr: I never saw those statues before either. But then I’ve never been to Cleveland. Does anyone else get very strong Lord of the Ring vibes from those guardians? I certainly do.
https://www.zedge.net/wallpaper/a3c7ce79-7889-3f36-9071-ae4e21ab4c3f
sdhays
@JoyceH: They’re in their own bubble reality, and it’s always a game of hardening as many of their partisans against objective reality (such as it is) before it slaps them in the face and screams in theirs ears. The “plan” is to “discredit” the committee, and thereby making everything it says irrelevant.
It’s not a good play, but Dumpism is a hell of drug and they’ve decided that they can’t walk the party away from 1/6. They can only pretend that it was a bunch of tourists, and Democrats are so MEAN!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat”– Will Rogers. I don’t know exactly when he said that, but looking for a date I see he died in 1935, so if he was talking about the improbably enduring coalition built by FDR, he was quick! I’ve never really thought about which incarnation of the Dems he said that about.
James E Powell
@jnfr:
If you’ve seen the movie Major League, you’ve seen the Guardian. It is literally the first thing you see.
Bishop Bag
@SFAW:
What I Got
Sublime
“Straight From Long Beach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uc3ZrmhDN4
cwmoss
@Frankensteinbeck: that’s when I decided Jon Stewart is an idiot and I’ve never looked back. Basically the Susan Sarandon of comedy.
...now I try to be amused
@Kent:
Good observation. Becoming a parent is what turns you into your parents.
J R in WV
@mrmoshpotato:
I’m not from Cleveland, so I have no idea what the F you’re talking about. How about more information, like the actual thing’s name you may be talking about?
I can read minds sometimes, but you would have to be closer than just somewhere on the innertubes.
Just One More Canuck
@mrmoshpotato: I wouldn’t want any of that merchandise
Just One More Canuck
@J R in WV: type in “Cleveland” in the search box on Urban Dictionary